24 L. A. Sherman 



living reproach to him. He is the shadowiest of dangers, but a 

 very actual reproach: and therefore Macbeth's first instinct is, by 

 removing Banquo, to obliterate the standard of decency, of 

 loyalty — if that loyalty were partial only, why, then, the more 

 credit for obeying it ! — which survives to accuse him. So Banquo 

 becomes naturally the first sacrifice to be paid to a guilty con- 

 science, and Banquo is murdered." This is the gist of our 

 author's six pages of discussion. 



Shakespeare will use the consequences of this murder to pre- 

 cipitate the plot. But to appreciate fully this turn in the story, 

 which has no warrant in Holinshed, we must consider briefly the 

 use which Shakespeare has made of the supernatural in the play 

 at large. 



The part played by the Witches seems to the present writer but 

 imperfectly recognized by Professor Quiller-Couch, as by critics 

 generally. Shakespeare was presumably unacquainted with the 

 Hierarchy of Dionysius and the mediaeval notion of dualism be- 

 tween good and evil angels of the various orders. Baconians 

 might find some color for their theory in the fact that the witch- 

 masters in this play appear to be evil Principalities of that 

 scheme, and concerned with fomenting calamity and woe for the 

 nations of the earth. ^^^ The Witches here are openly obedient to 



IS Just as in the Sphere of the Moon — which was nearest to the earth — 

 each child at birth came under the influence of a good angel and an evil 

 genius or angel, always in contention for control, so in the Sphere of 

 Venus, each nation was under tutelage of beneficent Principalities, with 

 whom malignant spirits of the same order were incessantly at war, trying 

 to afflict and destroy. Clear, bright days were due to the temporary pre- 

 vailment of the former, storms and foul weather, to recurrent triumphs of 

 the evil Lucifers. Macbeth rehearses (IV. i. 50-60) modes of deviltry that 

 the Witches, through their master, might set in motion. The play opens 

 in 'thunder, lightning and in rain' which, because of the fog and filthy 

 air — not usually attendant upon electric storms — were perhaps intended to 

 suggest diabolism. The commotions in nature on the night (II. iii. 59--66) 

 of the assassination are not doubtfully of this origin. And is Shake- 

 speare's thought that the Third Witch, who has apparently been hovering 

 over the scene of battle while her sisters execute distant commissions, has 

 had to do with the discomfiture of Macdonald, by making him helpless 

 against (I. ii. 16-23) the strangely hazardous lunge and lift of Macbeth's 

 sword? Any tyro should have fended the thrust successfully. 



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